Content
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google's human quality raters use to judge content, with first-hand Experience added in 2022.
It is not a direct ranking factor but a framework Google's systems approximate. It matters most for "your money or your life" topics like health, finance, and legal, where a named, credentialed author beats anonymous content. Showing real experience and citing sources strengthens it.
The experience component added in 2022 is the one most content programmes cannot fake. It asks whether the writer has actually done the thing, and it is why a review written from use outranks a summary of other reviews. For agencies and service businesses this points somewhere specific: publish what you learned running the work, including the parts that did not go well. Author pages matter here too, but only if they carry real detail. A byline with a stock photo and two lines of biography adds nothing an anonymous post lacks.
Example
Two articles on knee surgery recovery. One is bylined by an orthopedic surgeon with her hospital affiliation, cites recovery studies, includes what she tells her own patients. The other is anonymous, sourceless, and reads like assembled summaries. Both are accurate. For a query where being wrong causes harm, Google's systems are built to prefer the first, and the rater guidelines say exactly why.
Frequently asked questions
- Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?
- Not directly. It is a framework in Google's quality rater guidelines, used by human raters to evaluate whether search results are good. Those judgements inform algorithm development, so E-E-A-T describes what Google is trying to reward, not a switch you can flip.
- How do I demonstrate E-E-A-T on a website?
- Show real authorship with named authors and credentials, cite sources, publish first-hand experience instead of rewritten summaries, keep contact and company details visible, and earn mentions from sources your industry respects. Anonymous, unsourced content is the pattern this framework penalises.
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